THE PROBLEM
In the days that followed, there came other things which Jan could not
understand, and which he made no great effort to understand. He talked
little, even to Cummins. He listened, and his eyes would answer, or he
would reply with strange, eery little hunches of his shoulders, which
ruffled up his hair. To the few simple souls at the post, he brought
with him more than his starved body from out of the unknown wilderness.
This was the chief cause of those things which he could not understand.
No man learned more of him than had Cummins. Even to Mukee, his history
was equally simple and short. Always he said that he came from out of
the north--which meant the Barren Lands; and the Barren Lands meant
death. No man had ever come across them as Jan had come; and at another
time, and under other circumstances, Cummins and his people would have
believed him mad.
But others had listened to that strange, sweet music that came to them
from out of the forest on the night when the woman died, and they, like
Cummins, had been stirred by thrilling thoughts. They knew little of
God, as God is preached; but they knew a great deal about Him in other
ways. They knew that Jan Thoreau had come like a messenger from the
angels, that the woman's soul had gone out to meet him, and that she
had died sweetly on John Cummins' breast while he played. So the boy,
with his thin, sensitive face and his great, beautiful eyes, became a
part of what the woman had left behind for them to love. As a part of
her they accepted him, without further questioning as to who he was or
whence he came.
In a way, he made up for her loss. The woman had brought something new
and sweet into their barren lives, and he brought something new and
sweet--the music of his violin. He played for them in the evening, in
the factor's office; and at these times they knew that Cummins' wife
was very near to them and that she was speaking to them through the
things which Jan Thoreau played.
Music had long passed out of their lives. Into some, indeed, it had
never come. Years ago, Williams had been at a post where there was an
accordion. Cummins had heard music when he went down to civilization
for his wife, more than two years ago. To the others it was mystery
which stirred them to the depths of their souls, and which revealed to
them many things that had long been hidden in the dust of the past.
These were hours of triumph for Jan in the factor's office. Perched on
a box, with his back to the wall, his head thrown back, his black eyes
shining, his long hair giving to his face a half savage beauty, he was
more than king to the grim-visaged men about him. They listened,
movelessly, soundlessly; and when he stopped there was still neither
move nor sound until he had wrapped his violin in its bear-skin and had
returned to John Cummins and the little Mélisse. Jan understood the
silence, and took it for what it meant.
But it was the audience in the little cabin that Jan liked best, and,
most of all, he loved to have the little Mélisse alone. As the days of
early spring trapping approached, and the wilderness for a hundred
miles around the post was crisscrossed with the trails of the Cree and
Chippewayan fur-seekers, Cummins was absent for days at a time,
strengthening the company's friendships, and bargaining for the catch
that would be coming to market about eight weeks later.
This was a year of intense rivalry, for the Révillons, French
competitors of the company, had established a post two hundred miles to
the west, and rumor spread that they were to give sixty pounds of flour
to the company's forty, and four feet of cloth to the yard. This meant
action among Williams and his people, and the factor himself plunged
into the wilderness. Mukee, the half-Cree, went among his scattered
tribesmen along the edge of the barrens, stirring them by the eloquence
of new promises and by fierce condemnation of the interlopers to the
west. Old Per-ee, with a strain of Eskimo in him, went boldly behind
his dogs to meet the little black people from farther north, who came
down after foxes and half-starved polar bears that had been carried
beyond their own world on the ice-floes of the preceding spring. Young
Williams, the factor's son, followed after Cummins, and the rest of the
company's men went into the south and east.
The exodus left desolate lifelessness at the post. The windows of the
fireless cabins were thick with clinging frost. There was no movement
in the factor's office. The dogs were gone, and wolves and lynx sniffed
closer each night. In the oppression of this desertion, the few Indian
and half-breed children kept indoors, and Williams' Chippewayan wife,
fat and lazy, left the company's store securely locked.
In this silence and lifelessness Jan Thoreau felt a new and
ever-increasing happiness. To him the sound of life was a thing vibrant
with harshness; quiet--the dead, pulseless quiet of lifelessness--was
beautiful. He dreamed in it, and it was then that his fingers
discovered new things in his violin.
He often sent Maballa, the Indian woman who cared for Mélisse, to
gossip with Williams' wife, so that he was alone a great deal with the
baby. At these times, when the door was safely barred against the
outside world, it was a different Jan Thoreau who crouched upon his
knees beside the cot. His face was aflame with a great, absorbing
passion which at other times he concealed. His beautiful eyes glowed
with hidden fires, and he whispered soothing, singsong things to the
child, and played softly upon his violin, leaning his black head far
down so that the baby Mélisse could clutch her appreciative fingers in
his hair.
"Ah, ze sweet leetle white angel!" he would cry, as she tugged and
kicked. "I luf you so--I luf you, an' will stay always, ah' play ze
violon! Ah, mon Dieu, you will be ze gr-r-r-eat bea-utiful white angel
lak--HER!"
He would laugh and coo like a mother, and talk, for at these times Jan
Thoreau's tongue was as voluble as his violin.
Sometimes Mélisse listened as if she understood the wonderful things he
was telling her. She would lie upon her back with her eyes fixed upon
him, her little red fists doubled over his bow, or a thumb thrust into
her mouth. And the longer she lay like this, gazing at him blankly, the
more convinced Jan became that she was understanding him; and his voice
grew soft and low, and his eyes shone with a soft mist as he told her
those things which John Cummins would have given much to know.
"Some day you shall understand why it happened, sweet Mélisse," he
whispered, bringing his eyes so near that she reached up an inquiring
finger to them. "Then you will luf Jan Thoreau!"
There were other times when Jan did not talk, but when the baby Mélisse
talked to him; and these were moments of even greater joy. With the
baby wriggling and kicking, and making queer noises in her tiny cot, he
would sit silently upon his heels, watching her with the pride and
happiness of a mother lynx in the first tumbling frolics of her kittens.
Once, when Mélisse straightened herself for an instant, and half
reached up her tiny arms to him, laughing and cooing into his face, he
gave a glad cry, crushed his face down to hers, and did what he had not
dared to do before--kissed her. There was something about it that
frightened the little Mélisse, and she set up a wailing that sent Jan,
in a panic of dismay, for Maballa. It was a long time before he
ventured to kiss her again.
It was during this fortnight of desolation at the post that Jan
discovered the big problem for himself and John Cummins. In the last
days of the second week, he spent much of his time skirting the edge of
the barrens in search of caribou, that there might be meat in plenty
when the dogs and men returned a little later. One afternoon, he
returned early, while the pale sun was still in the sky, laden with the
meat of a musk-ox. As he came from the edge of the forest, his slender
body doubled over under the weight of his pack, a terrifying sight
greeted him in the little clearing at the post.
Upon her knees in front of their cabin was Maballa, industriously
rolling the half-naked little Mélisse about in a soft pile of snow, and
doing her work, as she firmly believed, in a most faithful and thorough
manner. With a shriek, Jan threw off his pack and darted toward her
like a wild thing.
"Sacre bleu--you keel--keel ze leetle Mélisse!" he cried shrilly,
snatching up the half-frozen child, "Mon Dieu, she ees not papoose! She
ees ceevilize--ceevilize!" and he ran swiftly with her into the cabin,
flinging back a torrent of Cree anathema at the dumbly bewildered
Maballa.
Jan left the rest of his musk-ox to the wolves and foxes. He went out
into the snow, and found half a dozen other snow-wallows in which the
helpless Mélisse had taken her chilling baths. He watched Maballa with
a new growing terror, and fifty times a day he said to her:
"Mélisse ees not papoose! She ees ceevilize--lak HER!" And he would
point to the lonely grave under the guardian spruce.
At last Maballa went into an ecstasy of understanding. Mélisse was not
to be taken out and rolled in the snow; so she brought in the snow and
rolled it over Mélisse!
When Jan discovered this, his tongue twisted itself into sounds so
terrible, and his face writhed so fiercely, that Maballa began to
comprehend that thereafter no snow at all, either out doors or in, was
to be used in the physical development of the little Mélisse.
This was the beginning of the problem, and it grew and burst forth in
all its significance on the day before Cummins came in from the
wilderness.
For a week Maballa had been dropping sly hints of a wonderful thing
which she and the factor's half-breed wife were making for the baby.
Jan had visions of a gorgeous garment covered with beads and gaudy
braid, which would give the little Mélisse unending delight. On the day
before Cummins' arrival, Jan came in from chopping wood, and went to
the cot. It was empty. Maballa was gone. A sudden fear thrilled him to
the marrow, and he sprang back to the cabin door, ready to shriek out
the Indian woman's name.
A sound stopped him--the softest, sweetest sound in all the world to
Jan Thoreau--and he whirled around like a cat. Mélisse was smiling and
making queer, friendly little signals to him from the table. She was
standing upright, wedged in a coffin-shaped thing from which only her
tiny white face peered out at him; and Jan knew that this was Maballa's
surprise, Mélisse was in a papoose-sling!
"Mélisse, I say you shall be no papoose!" he cried, running to the
table. "You ees ceevilize! You shall be no papoose--not if twen'
t'ous'nd devil come tak Jan Thoreau!"
And he snatched her from her prison, flung Maballa's handiwork out into
the snow, and waited impatiently for the return of John Cummins.